Miquel Roca

Miquel Roca Junyent (Bordeaux, France, April 20, 1940) is a Spanish lawyer and expolatic > of the current Spanish Constitution of 1978.

Biography

His father, Joan Bautista Roca Caball, was one of the founders of Unió Democràtica de Catalunya, who in December 1936, with the beginning of the civil war, decided to march to France. Thus, Miquel Roca was born in Caudéran, near Bordeaux, on April 20, 1940. At the end of that year, before the threat of World War II, his mother and with her his children, they returned to Spain. His father still remained in Bordeaux. His maternal grandfather was Miguel Junyent, a Catalan politician, who was a deputy and senator during the restoration and Carlist leader.

studied the law degree at the University of Barcelona. During his studies, he was part of the Democratic Union of Students of Barcelona. After finishing the career in 1961, he was a professor at the Faculty of Law and combined this activity with the professional practice of law.

Political beginnings

began its political activity in the Front Obre de Catalunya (linked to the popular liberation front), along with Narcís Serra and Pasqual Maragall. From the Constitution of Democratic Convergence of Catalonia in 1974 and until 1979 he held the Deputy General Secretariat.

In the first democratic elections of postfranchism he was elected deputy by the province of Barcelona, a seat that he maintained until 1995. During this legislature, constituent, he was one of the seven deputies speakers who were responsible for the drafting of the Constitution.

As a deputy he was president of the Catalan parliamentary group in Congress from 1977 to 1995 and spokesman for Convergence I Unió (CIU) in several legislatures. From 1982 to 1995 he was also president of the representation of the Generalitat of Catalonia in the Bilateral Cooperation Commission with State Administration.

Roca Operation

After the electoral debacle of the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD) in 1982 and its subsequent disappearance in 1983, the so -called " reformist operation ", which sought the creation of a character of character of character was launched Centrista and Europeanist, in the style of what represented Convergència I joined in Catalonia. The expression of this initiative was the Democratic Reform Party (PRD) that brought together, among others, the Liberal Democratic Party of Antonio Garrigues Walker and Galician coalition. The new promoters of this party, embodied in Garrigues and Florentino Pérez proposed to Miquel Roca. This operation. Among the rock projects, there was already the idea of linking Catalanism with its intervention in national politics. The agreed conditions with the Catalan politician assumed their permanence in CiU, which came to be the Catalan branch of the reformist project.

<p The electoral results were a failure because the new party that did not obtain any seat in the Congress of Deputies, although Galician coalition if it obtained 1 deputy and CiU reached 18, improving the latter, substantially its results.

Pujolism distancing

Over the years, a certain distancing between the political positions of the party leader and president of the generality of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, and Miquel Roca, was growing. Thus, the elaboration of the lists for the campaign of the 1993 general elections, in which the convergence position I Unió was expected decisive, gave rise to friction between them for the control of the candidates and their tendencies. He continued after those elections with the decision on a possible coalition government with the Socialist Party and was definitely reflected in July of that same year, by cutting the autonomy with which the parlimal group of the Congress worked, under the command of Roca, and which some convergence leaders accused of going for free in Madrid and submitting decisions to what the link committee between the two parties that maintained the CiU coalition.

In 1995, he left his deputy position and his activity as a representative in Madrid of the CiU Group and was elected as a candidate for mayor of Barcelona, to try to unseat the then mayor, Pasqual Maragall and held his position since 1982. Despite the popularity of rock and against one of the previous polls, Maragall beat the elections, while Roca continued as a councilor until 1999.

In July 2002, when he was outside the first political line, the then president of the Spanish Government, José María Aznar, offered to occupy the Minister of Foreign Minister that Roca rejected. The proposal was made at a time when CiU tried to distance himself from the Popular Party, after several years of collaboration.

Politics output

After his resignation as Secretary General of Democratic Convergence of Catalonia at the end of 1995 and after announcing that he would not repeat as a candidate in the municipal elections of 1999, he opened the law firm " Roca Junyent " In January 1996, which over the years became one of the most prosperous in the city and that in 2006, invoiced 26.6 million euros and that in 2018, had 230 professionals. He compatible his activity as a lawyer with the professor of Constitutional Law at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona.

<p In May 2016, the investigating judge of this procedure, José Castro Aragón, declared that from the office of Miquel Roca, a meeting was proposed in December 2013; clandestina " to treat the possible imputation of the Infanta.

It combines its legal activity with the belonging to various business management bodies such as Endesa or ACS. He is also president of the Abertis Foundation, the Amics del Mnac Foundation, the Barcelona Economic Society of Friends of the Country and vice president of the Barcelona Culture Foundation. He is also non -advisor secretary of Banco Sabadell, Abertis Infrastructura, Typsa and Access of Madrid. 2000.

Recognitions

• Necklace of the Order of Civil Merit (2003)
• Gran Cruz de la Orden de San Raimundo de Peñafort (2016)
• Doctor Honoris Causa by Universidad Pontificia Comillas (2018)